Going home (4th @ NANPC NJ)

Combo sports was my baby. I was playing nothing except combo Sports for over a year. I won our internal Muntal Bost league with combo Sports. It’s just such gas and I am extremely comfortable playing it and adapting to the board state. Unfortunately, the Luminal ban hurt it badly - the next-best replacement, Offworld, can only be fast advanced by sticking a Wage Workers. To make it even worse, the pressure of Mulch and Zombie Freedom on my held operations made this an extremely risky pick. I knew I wanted to play Sports to give it a sendoff, and I tried Dull_Bulb’s Amani Sports and had a blast. Amani is also disproportionately good against decks that run low to ground and rely on alternative economies (e.g., virus counters). It took me a bit to adjust from my own version I’d played for over a year, but once I did I was groovin’.

This deck has no one “ideal” way to stop the runner from winning. To me, this deck is optimally played by reacting to the board state and runner threats, and making choices that ensure every interaction the runner has with your board favors you, even if only slightly; over the course of the game these add up, you outpace them, and you win. I really want to stress that this deck ought to be played reactively. You may want to waste the runner’s time by spamming remotes. You may recur Amani behind heavy ice over and over again with Powers and Ablative. You may jam behind a cheap remote until you’re at 5pts and then Biotic for the win. It feels very flexible and that to me is extremely fun and powerful.

Slots

• I cut Seamless for Biotic because shapers are full of hubris and cutting Clot, and I love the get-outta-jail-free card that fast advance provides; being at 7c is threatening to win the game, no matter your board state, and that is very powerful (especially against crim).
• I changed Cohort to a bunch of different influence slots - Wraparound, the third Powers That Be, Federal Fundraising - but eventually landed back on Cohort for the gas and the cheaper never-advance threat with Wage Workers.
• I cut an M.I.C. for Bran at @ThatsNoMun’s suggestion simply because that card is extremely good. This never mattered, but I’d probably do it again. M.I.C. is better against Deep Dive, but Bran is more taxing to break and harder to charge up a turtle against.
• I cut an Ikawah for an Offworld. The money is great, the Amani trace is great, it’s much easier to score than Ikawah, and like to play the fast advance game (which you can, with Wage Workers). Drawing Ikawahs as your early agendas when you want to score right now feels awful.

Game 1: Win vs. Wenjong on Clot Price Lat

The runner was very prepared for this matchup - drip econ, Hannah, Paricia, and Clot. I played tactically, every turn evaluating the board to see how I could squeeze out the most tempo while preventing him from being able to efficiently assemble his rig to contest my two-ice remote. I achieved this by spamming installs and icing Working Prototype, aiming to threaten a resource bounce as often as possible. Steve got to fire exactly once before being bounced, and Aesop’s was bounced several times as well. I was also able to force suboptimally-early SMC use by threatening to bounce a 3-counter Environmental Testing. After purging Clot manually, I Biotic a Vitruvius for the win.

One funny (though ultimately not impactful) meta-gaming play was during his last turn before I scored out. He runs HQ, I rez Drafter, and he pops Simulchip for SMC to go grab his killer. He’d accidentally missed drawing off of LilyPAD a few times before (which I always granted), so this time I asked “would you like to draw a card off Lilypad?”, crossing my fingers that he would draw his killer - lo and behold, he did. If you aren’t table talking (respectfully), you’re missing out.

Game 4: Win vs. Redino987 on Kit

I had an amazing start with Wage Workers, Amani, ice Wage Workers, and take a credit. I kept him consistently poor by bouncing the same copy of Telework over and over, it must have been 4 times. He had an unfortunate Deep Dive whiff (well, he saw an Ikawah, but had no click to steal it) and I ran a train of absolute tempo. My favorite turn was 1) Fully Op to draw into an agenda 2) Install the Vitruvius I drew 3) Biotic 4) Biotic, gaining a WW click 5) advance 6) advance 7) advance, gaining a WW click 8) advance, score Vitruvius with a counter, Amani bounce the Telework 9) jam a Rashida. Ultimately I won the game with him having zero cards installed. This is the kinda shit I live for, and yes I miss Luminal every day.

Game 6: ID vs. DeeR on Maw Hoshiko

I swear to god Swiss math is actually harder than Netrunner. I do not understand it and am convinced no one does.

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My only regret is that I didn’t get to play more games of this deck on the day. I can’t fucking wait for Poétrï and am so stoked it is evergreen.